Christmas Cheer
by ncfan
Summary: Kinzo had lost sight of any joy or warmth in Christmas after Beatrice died, and this Christmas, he was determined to drink himself into a stupor so he wouldn't remember anything about today later. Trust four-year-old Jessica to ruin his plans. -An early Christmas story, from me to you.


I own nothing.

* * *

Bice had been, she admitted, not a particularly devout Catholic, but one of the things Kinzo learned about her early on was that she was interested in keeping Christmas.

"_It's one of the few things I miss about Italy," she said wistfully, staring out the window on gray skies and the slush in the street. "Come Christmastime you would have carolers going from house to house singing and reciting poems—I was never allowed to go, but I would go on walks in the evening and join up with them anyways. We would have panettone, but no meat on Christmas Eve. The house would be decorated so beautifully…"_

They couldn't go out caroling in Odawara; virtually no one celebrated Christmas there, and even if they had, Bice would have stood out entirely too much among a city made up primarily of dark-haired people. There was also the matter of Bice not knowing exactly how to make panettone, and while she admitted that what they ended up with was very similar to panettone, it simply wasn't the same. But they could decorate the house where she lived, and they could exchange gifts come Christmas day.

The pattern was repeated later in Kuwadorian. Bice had tried to insist that the gifts should be exchanged early in January rather than on Christmas day, but when she couldn't explain to Kinzo's satisfaction why, she relented and decided to agree to exchange gifts on the twenty-fifth of December instead. Come Christmas day, Kinzo would leave his house, whether it be in Odawara or on Rokkenjima, and go to the home of his only love so that they could exchange gifts and spend Christmas together.

Neither Bice nor Beatrice could ever give him the sorts of gifts he gave them; the circumstances simply did not allow for that. Truth be told, Kinzo got a secret thrill from giving them elaborate gifts, and knowing that nothing either of them gave him could measure up. Something told him (that something probably being Bice's explanation of the holiday) that this was not an appropriate thing to be feeling when keeping Christmas, but Kinzo pushed away his misgivings.

Kinzo was not a Christian. Whatever Christian trapping that might be found in the Ushiromiya family's mansion on Rokkenjima, the chapel in particular, had been placed there to honor Bice, and Beatrice. When he sat in a beautifully decorated house with them, exchanging gifts and eating food that he would never touch at any other time of the year, there was something about it that felt almost religious, but Kinzo never really understood the religious core of the holiday. Celebrating Christmas without them felt hollow, a completely empty gesture.

Try he did, though. After Kuwadorian found itself empty, Kinzo tried to celebrate Christmas in the mansion he lived in with his legal family, tried to recapture some of that warm feeling, those moments of contentment that must have been the feeling of God smiling on him. It was a vain effort, and he knew it; how could he ever feel that sort of warm contentment for a wife and children he did not want?

And true enough, Kinzo felt nothing but empty when he tried to celebrate Christmas with his legal family. Even after his wife died, and he could have counted himself free, he could dredge up nothing when celebrating the holiday.

This year was no different. It was himself, Krauss, Natsuhi, Jessica, and the servants on duty at the time; Genji and Kumasawa's presence was something of a comfort, but not much. Kinzo sat in a chair in the parlor, quite thoroughly forgotten, looking at the smorgasbord of pastries laid out on the table without much enthusiasm. Krauss and Natsuhi were chatting comfortably about a business venture of the former's; Kumasawa and one of the young girls from the Fukuin House were sneaking sweets, taking advantage of Natsuhi's unusual leniency on this day.

Kinzo himself was trying his very hardest to get hammered on eggnog so he wouldn't have any clear memories of today later. This was, he was beginning to learn, far easier said than done. Either Genji had watered the stuff down while he wasn't looking, or Kinzo was so used to absinthe that anything weaker just wasn't enough to get him drunk. There was a bit of a headache forming over his right eye, but that probably wasn't the eggnog.

Today could not be over soon enough.

"Grandpa?"

Interrupted in the middle of trying to drink himself into a stupor with the holiday eggnog, Kinzo looked down to see Jessica staring up at him with a bright, giddy grin on her face—giddy enough to make him wonder if she hadn't had some of the eggnog herself.

At four years old, his granddaughter was already boisterous enough to have Natsuhi pulling her hair out in frustration. However, for the past month or so, she had been behaving herself much better than usual. How, Kinzo didn't know, but Jessica had managed to prevail upon her mother to let her wear what she wanted on Christmas, provided that she behave herself for the entirety of December.

The results of his granddaughter's good behavior was that she had chosen to wear a pair of light gray sweatpants and what had to be the ugliest sweater Kinzo had ever seen. It was bright red and fuzzy, covered in reindeer with red plastic baubles for noses, green Christmas trees made out of glitter, white snowmen that appeared to be in a state of melting, turtledoves, and had large purple puffballs around the collar. On top of that, it didn't match with the sweatpants. Someone had _clearly _not developed a sense of fashion yet.

He glared blearily down at her. "Well, what is it?"

Jessica seemed immune to his glare today. Maybe she really had gotten into the eggnog while Natsuhi wasn't looking; Kinzo knew how reckless alcohol could make people. "This is for you!" she told him, holding out a card and a lumpen package wrapped in red wrapping paper with holly leaves on it.

If he didn't take it, Jessica would probably cry, and Natsuhi, as kowtowing a daughter-in-law as she was, would probably scold him. One did not make Jessica cry without reason in this house and get away with it. And truth be told, Kinzo was slightly curious to see what she had gotten him, the way he was curious to uncover any minor mystery that fell into his lap. "Alright," he muttered, laying his cup of eggnog aside and taking the card and the package from Jessica.

The card was, he quickly realized, homemade. Jessica had drawn what was probably supposed to be some sort of Christmas-y scene on white construction paper in crayon. He saw a snowman, and a green blob that was, he supposed, a Christmas tree. There were also yellow, blue and purple blobs under the Christmas tree that perhaps represented Christmas presents. In shaky, badly-written kanji, there was written, _'To Grandpa, from Jessica. Merry Christmas!'_, also in black crayon.

Kinzo wasn't terribly impressed with the card, and set it aside. He now ripped apart the wrapping paper on the present Jessica had given him, and got a good look at the present she had given him.

Jessica attended nursery school on Niijima, and it seemed that nursery school also involved an arts and crafts class. Kinzo was holding in his hands a decidedly misshapen clay bowl. It had been put through the kiln and glazed, and later painted dark purple. The bowl was very shallow, and wouldn't be good for holding very much.

Somehow, that didn't seem to matter very much.

The eggnog had to be getting to him at last. That could be the only explanation for why Kinzo looked at the bowl Jessica had made for him, and found that he actually liked it. He normally didn't like interacting with her at all; her blonde hair and blue eyes felt like such a slap in the face that just seeing her made him angry.

Jessica beamed up at him in anticipation, and Kinzo told himself that her similarities in appearance to Bice and Beatrice wasn't a slap in the face. He told himself that her blonde hair was lighter in shade than theirs, and her eyes were a lighter shade of blue as well. She was a shadow of them, but not a mockery.

Kinzo managed a smile. A half-hearted smile, but a smile nonetheless. "Thank you, Jessica."

Her beam turned into a frankly blinding gap-toothed grin. "You're welcome, Grandpa!" She ran off to where her parents were sitting, squealing "He liked it! He liked it!"

Maybe he had recovered a bit of that warm feeling he used to experience at Christmas. Maybe it really was just the eggnog. Either way, Kinzo was already pondering where to put the bowl on his desk.


End file.
